On the most recent surveys, the river is holding on but not thriving. The sensitive creatures are present in some stretches and missing from others, which is exactly the pattern our work is meant to change.
What we are counting, and why it works
Some creatures that live on the riverbed cannot survive in polluted water. Others thrive in it. So the mix living in a stretch of river tells you what that water has been like for months, not just on the morning somebody tested it, which is what makes this a better measure than a single chemical reading.
Our volunteers count the kinds of creature they find, not how many. Forty mayflies and one mayfly say the same thing: mayflies can live here. Four different pollution-sensitive kinds says far more about a stretch than four hundred of one hardy one.
Stretch by stretch
Mad River Bend Reach
4 visits · most recent score 26 · its own average 17.8
Improving: up 5.5 points on recent visits compared with the ones before.
North Bridge to Oak Bend
1 visit · most recent score 0 · its own average 0
We have not visited this stretch enough times yet to say which way it is going.
What is living out there
How often our volunteers find each kind. The pollution-sensitive ones are listed first: those are the ones whose presence is worth celebrating and whose absence is worth investigating.
- Mayfly nymph on 80% of visits
- Stonefly nymph on 80% of visits
- Caddisfly larva on 80% of visits
- Dragonfly nymph on 80% of visits
- Scud on 20% of visits
- Clam or mussel on 20% of visits
- Black fly larva on 20% of visits
- Leech on 20% of visits
- Blood midge larva (red) on 20% of visits